Solar Eclipse

                                       SOLAR ECLIPSE

November 13th to the 14th 2012 a full eclipse will be able to be seen in Cairns QLD, Australia along with parts of New Caledonia, New Zealand, South America and Antarctica. 

AROUND THE WORLD: Animation of where the Solar Eclipse will be visible

HOW IT WORKS: Solar Eclipse

In Sydney the maximum Eclipse will occur in the morning at 8:03.

Sir's email: ragawthorne@parra.catholic.edu.au

Cane Toad -Distribution and Abundance

Maps from 2006

Cane Toads have been present in Australia for nearly seventy years. They were introduced to Australia in 1935, when approximately 100 individuals were imported from Hawaii in 1935. Around 3000 young toads were released at Gordonvale near Cairns, North Queensland, to control the sugar cane pests, French's Cane Beetle, and the Greyback Cane Beetle,Dermolepida albohirtum, whose larvae eat the roots of sugar cane and kill or stunt the plants. Cane Toads proved to be unsuccessful in controlling cane beetles.

 Since its introduction to Australia, the Cane Toad has spread south and west across the continent and now occurs in Queensland, Northern Territory and New South Wales. From their introductory site near Cairns, the Cane Toad has spread throughout Queensland, being recorded in Brisbane in the 1940s, and was considered to occupy approximately 50% of the State by the late 1990s (Sutherst et al. 1995).

Chicken wing dissection

Chicken Wing Dissection

To dissect the chicken wing we used a scalpel, scissors, forceps and a probe. We laid it on a piece of newspaper and put on some rubber gloves.

        First we cut off all the skin revealing all the muscles, ligaments, tendons and bones.

           We pulled on the tricep to move the wing outwards and the bicep to make the wing move inwards.

             After we moved and looked at all the muscles we cut them off to have a look at the bones underneath.

Once we            were just down to the bones we looked at the comparisons to the bones in                  t                       the chicken wings to our human arms. Like humans the chicken wing has both            a                        an ulna and a radius. They also have a humorous leading to their elbow. The                           o                       only real difference being that the chickens fingers were spread out to form the wings.         To finish the dissection we cracked open the elbow joint to see the cartilage on the bone.

T                    To clean up ewe disposed everything hygienically and washed the dissection utensils. 

NASA image

Active Black Hole Squashes Star Formation

(copied from NASA website find the link lower)

New data from the Herschel Space Observatory shows that galaxies with the most powerful, active, supermassive black holes at their cores produce fewer stars than galaxies with less ones.

Supermassive black holes are believed to reside in the hearts of all large galaxies. When gas falls upon these monsters, the materials are accelerated and heated around the black hole, releasing great torrents of energy. In the process, active black holes often generate colossal jets that blast out twin streams of heated matter.

Inflows of gas into a galaxy also fuel the formation of new stars. In a new study of distant galaxies, Herschel helped show that star formation and black hole activity increase together, but only up to a point. Astronomers think that if an active black hole flares up too much, it starts spewing radiation that prevents raw material from coalescing into new stars.

This artist concept of the local galaxy Arp 220, captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, helps illustrate the Herschel results. The bright core of the galaxy, paired with an overlaid artist's impression of jets emanating from it, indicate that the central black hole's activity is intensifying. As the active black hole continues to rev up, the rate of star formation will, in turn, be suppressed in the galaxy. Astronomers want to further study how star formation and black hole activity are intertwined.

Herschel is a European Space Agency cornerstone mission, with science instruments provided by consortia of European institutes, with important participation by NASA.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_2247.html

60 minutes, the big bang theory.

http://sixtyminutes.ninemsn.com.au/stories/8465832/the-big-bang-theory
click it ^^

Cool Science Video

This is a video with some really cool science tricks. They're really simple but really cool and you could easily try some yourself.